Ryan Thorpe

Reporter - City

Signal: thorpe-freepress

Ryan Thorpe likes the pace of daily news, the feeling of a broadsheet in his hands and the stress of never-ending deadlines hanging over his head. He believes journalism isn’t a career, but a calling; that rather than being something you do, a journalist is something you are.

Ryan grew up in Brandon. After a number of years spent working as a support worker in the Wheat City, he left the Prairies to pursue a career as a reporter. He graduated top of his class from Niagara College’s journalism program in 2017.

As a student reporter, he picked up an Ontario Community Newspaper Awards nomination for a story on food bank use in southern Ontario. In addition, he served as editor on an investigative project on the precarious state of student mental health on Canadian post-secondary campuses, which won a 2017 Emerge Media Award.

Ryan is a former intern at The Hamilton Spectator, where he co-authored a six-week investigative report on drug use in the city’s high schools. Afterwards he made his way back home to the Prairies, landing a summer internship at the Free Press in June 2017. Since then, he’s managed to find a way to stick around the newspaper.

He considers it a privilege to bear witness to the history of his community as it unfolds. In his mind, there’s no better job in the world than reporting the news. When not at work, he can often be found with his nose in a book.